Marisha Chamberlain is a novelist, playwright, poet and librettist. Her published works include the following. See more about her work in progress on the home page.
The Rose Variations by Marisha Chamberlain
Available at your local independent bookstore. Also available from Amazon.com.
A novel by Marisha Chamberlain
Available from Soho Press, February 2, 2009
“In this richly absorbing novel Chamberlain creates a heroine so vivid, so complex, so passionate that she walks right off the page and into the reader’s mind and heart. I loved following Rose through her various vicissitudes, romantic and musical, and through her many relationships with friends, colleagues, students and lovers. The Rose Variations is one of those rare novels that captures the complexity of a life lived over time, and does so in beautiful, eloquent prose. A brilliant debut.”
–Margot Livesey, author of The House of Fortune Street
The World Beloved: A Bluegrass Mass
Music by Carol Barnett. Text by Marisha Chamberlain. 2007.
Available from VocalEssence
Also available from Amazon.com
In collaboration with composer Carol Barnett, a work which combines classical choral music and the Bluegrass idiom in a new rendition of the Catholic Mass. Chamberlain’s text embodies the notion that Jesus Christ, much as a traditional Zen bodhisattva, out of compassion, gave up any distance from human suffering.
“…Much of the credit for the success of the piece has to go to librettist Marisha Chamberlain who took the Catholic liturgy and transformed it … Chamberlain replaced the notion of original sin with that of original blessing and created a work of life-affirming celebration.” The Minneapolis Star Tribune
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Scheherazade
Play by Marisha Chamberlain
Script and performance rights available from Dramatists Play Service
This often harrowing but ultimately soaring first play traces the fate of a rape victim from initial trauma to the eventual reconciliation of this shattering event into the continuum of her life…
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“…a work that stimulates an audience—not just intellectually, but emotionally.” − Minneapolis City Pages
Little Women
Adapted for the stage by Marisha Chamberlain
Script and performance rights available from Playscripts, Inc.
Under the guidance of their beloved mother, the four young March sisters — tempestuous Jo, motherly Meg, shy Beth, and spoiled baby Amy — struggle to keep their family going while Father’s away in the Civil War. In this beautifully dramatized adaptation of the classic novel, even as privation, illness, and sibling rivalry cast their shadows, each girl strives to find her true self.
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Hope for Breakfast
Play by Marisha Chamberlain
Script and performance rights available from Playscripts, Inc.
Hope for Breakfast intertwines the beloved story of Little Women with what actually went on in the family life of the novel’s author, Louisa May Alcott. Living in the intellectual hub of Massachusetts, circa 1840, young Louisa strives to keep her …
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Play by Marisha Chamberlain
Script and performance rights available from Playscripts, Inc.
In this adaptation of the first nine chapters of Charlotte Bronte’s masterpiece, 10-year-old Jane Eyre is driven from Gateshead Manor, where she lives as a despised poor relation, to a harshly disciplined boarding …
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The Canterville Ghost
Play by Marisha Chamberlain
Script and performance rights available from Playscripts, Inc.
A no-nonsense American family buys an old mansion in rural England, scoffing at warnings of a fierce and violent resident ghost. The spirited Americans — Mother, Father, young Virginia, and her mischievous little…
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Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
Play by Marisha Chamberlain
Script and performance rights available from Playscripts, Inc.
The story of a wild and mischievous girl who eventually wins the hearts of not only her doting Aunt Jane but her severe Aunt Miranda. Rebecca leaves her widowed mother, her six brothers and sisters, and her beloved farm to go live with her aunts in town and get an education. A spirited girl, she gets herself into all sorts of scrapes, to her Aunt Miranda’s disgust and dismay. At the heart of the play is a debate: whether or not children are basically good…
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Powers
Poems by Marisha Chamberlain
Published in 1983 by New Rivers Press
Currently out-of-print, but available from used book sellers.
